Medium Cherry Plywood Not Recognized As Proofgrade, Residue left on GF tray After Cut

I am having 2 issues with Medium Cherry Plywood sheets (recently purchased stock). First, the machine is not recognizing and reading the code sticker on the material. Second, after manually indicating Med. Cherry Ply as the material and doing the cut, instead of pieces coming cleanly off of the GF bed, they are now sticking to the bed and there is a sticky film left behind on the bed. This never happened before with past sheets of Med. Cherry Plywood proofgrade stock. Any ideas what has changed and happened? What is the best way to clean the honeycomb bed (and other surfaces) from the sticky residue being laid down?

This happens periodically. There’s a recent bug that has resolved the problem for many people, but it could also be that you need to clean the cover lens, or don’t have enough light in the room, or you have too much light in the room. Unless it happens consistently, I wouldn’t consider it a problem; you can always manually select your material in the upper left corner.

Depending on what exactly you’re cutting/engraving, this could be residue from previous cuts, or residue from your current operation. Try cleaning the tray with some isopropyl alcohol or baby wipes.

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One thing to remember (and why tests on new batches of wood is a good idea if making something important and resource hungry) is that wood is Organic.
As such, no two chunks are going to necessarily be identical.
More resin, less resin, and so forth. (and the occasional pesky void in plys).

The organic difference is much more noticeable on leather resources. Especially in color and tone. Seem ok until you place stuff next to each other.

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Thanks for reaching out, and I’m sorry you ran into trouble. I’ve taken a look at the images taken by the lid camera on your Glowforge, and it looks like there has been some buildup of dust and residue over the course of some recent prints. When the camera lens is dirty or obstructed in this way, it can make Proofgrade material detection difficult.

Could you please try the following:

  1. Clean your Glowforge according to these instructions
  2. After you’ve cleaned, open any design in the app
  3. Click on the gear icon and choose “Refresh bed image”
  4. Reply to this comment and let me know that you’ve cleaned and refreshed the bed image

Regarding the sticky residue on your crumbtray, could you please provide photographs of the back of the material after the recent prints on Proograde Cherry Plywood? We’re happy to take a closer look.

It’s been a little while since I’ve seen any replies on this thread so I’m going to close it. If you still need help with this please either start a new thread or email support@glowforge.com.